Milwaukee has a "City Homes" project underway, reclaiming dense vacant single family lots for new construction. It has been very successful at bringing middle class residents back to these former war zones.

Yes it can be done. Milwaukee is a prime example of very successful New Urbanist principles being implemented. Milwaukee was one of the rust belt cities that has seen a recent (past 10-12 years) influx of numerous New Urbanist projects, especially in housing, retail, and entertainment/dining.

Edit:
....looks like Chet and I both chimed in at the same time. I almost forgot about City Homes.

There are several projects, past and ongoing, in Pittsburgh. Most are large scale developments on river front brownfields where the steel-mills used to be. A new one slated to get underway later this year is the leveling of several 1960's era apartment towers, reintroducing the old street grid that was destroyed by urban renewal and lots of new market housing. I'm excited about it and am actually considering buying a house in that neighborhood before the prices shoot through the roof in a couple of years.

Also, the Chicago Housing Authority is replacing the projects with mixed-income developments. They don't have mixed uses, but that's not much of a problem in the city where a commercial street is never more than a block or two away.

New Ubanists always like to talk about mixed income but I don't think they've ever actually built anything that comes close to being considered mixed, so the CHA's success with it is pretty encouraging.

Michaeskis, HUD's Hope VI Program seems to have created a lot of NU style developments in inner cities.

I believe the latest edition of Planning magazine had a feature on the St. Thomas HOPE VI redevelopment project in New Orleans where the old housing development was demolished and is presently being replaced with single and two family homes. The entire project is being anchored by a huge ass Walmart, much to the dismay of many people. I've talked about this ad naseum in these forums before.

I mean if a builder puts something up that fits in with its surrounding is that really NU or is it "old urbanism"

Either way we have a lot of it in Philly. Most of it market rate, a lot of it driven by UPenn in the University City area, also a good deal of it mixed income and built by Universal Properties Inc. that has partnered with the PHA.

As far as NU not building "mixed-income" developments - I'll just have to disagree. Just because they're market driven doesn't mean they don't accomodate people of different incomes.

What i think you are reffering to are units for sale where the purchase price is subsidized by various governments. Again, from experience, i'll have to disagree. I see it all the time when a state or a Housing Authority is subsidizing part of the project. Otherwise, show me the bank that is going to finance a developer who is subsidizing the sale price of certain units with proceeds from other units. Banks don't like that kind of risk.

In NJ of course, with Mt. Laurel I and II towns have to include a certain number of low and mod housing and they usually pass that responsibility on to the developers (when they're not buying housing credits from cities like Camden.) This doesn't mean, however, that the state doesn't subsidize those units.

Ok now that I know it can be done, I just need to figure out how to get the idea across to people, and see where I can find funding.

We have a situation here that may or may not be unusual with we do not have much, (if any) land for new development. The only large sections of land that we have right now are old rail road yards, and the company does not want to sell. Many of these ideas would have to be slowly worked into neighborhoods that have existed for many years.

If you want different results in your life, you need to do different things than you have done in the past. Change is that simple.

I mean if a builder puts something up that fits in with its surrounding is that really NU or is it "old urbanism"

Exactly. I've always thought of New Urbanism as something that applies generally to suburban "greenfield" areas. Pretty much anything that blends in with the surroundings of most pre-WWII former industrial cities fits the definition of NU without the tag.

there are no zoning changes. It's just infill that matches the character of the surrounding buildings.

Buildings per se aren't mixed use all the time unless they occupy a prominent corner or are on a commercial street but like someone else said, It's rarely more than a block to a commercial street so the 'hood is still mixed use.